Social Media

Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

As Twitter and its 140 character limit has skyrocketed to popularity, another type of service rode grew exponentially as well: URL shorteners. From Bit.ly to TinyURL, the quality and number of link shorteners has ballooned.

The debate's about to heat up again though, as Tr.im, a URL shortener with nearly a million unique visitors per month, is shutting down. And by January 1st, 2010, all Tr.im links could be out of service. The URL shortener's demise exposes a major flaw in all URL shorteners and reopens the debate over whether they are good or bad for the web.

Tr.im's Somber Message

If you visit Tr.im's homepage, you will see a short, four paragraph statement announcing Tr.im has been discontinued, effective immediately. Here's the full text. I have bolded the most interesting parts:

Statistics can no longer be considered reliable, or reliably available going forward. However, all tr.im links will continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009. Your tweets with tr.im URLs in them will not be affected.

We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed.No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount.

There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening — users won't pay for it — and we just can't justify further devleopment since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner. There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep.

We apologize for the disruption and inconvenience this may cause you.

This is one of the most interesting shutdown announcements I've ever read. The key points are that links will work until the end of the year, that tr.im believes Bit.ly has won, and that they believe there is NO WAY to monetize URL shorteners.

It's a very stark and powerful message. But is Tr.im correct?

What Does Tr.im's Shutdown Mean for the Web?

While Tr.im didn't have anywhere near the traffic that Bit.ly and TinyURL had, it still had a significant userbase, as you can find millions of Tr.im URLs spread across Twitter. If Tr.im shuts down its servers, millions of links will simply die. Poof, just like that. Someone could even buy Tr.im and redirect all the links to spam, porn, or malware. Our bet however is that someone reputable buys Tr.im before December 31st. There is just too much value in those links for there to be no bidders.

Tr.im's demise renews the debate over URL shorteners. What happens if Bit.ly or TinyURL were to be hacked or lost their URL data? An entire ecosystem of links would suddenly be swept away. Millions upon millions of links could suddenly vanish, leaving users confused and a possibly uncleanable mess.

It also opens up the debate on monetizing URL shorteners. TinyURL has survived for years just fine, while Bit.ly's preparing to launch a new product that will compete directly with Digg. Will users pay for URL shorteners? No, probably not. However, they might pay for the information that URL shorteners possess.

Tr.im's shutdown is going to result in a mess unless it's bought. Its death reopens a very real and very important debate on the future of URL shorteners and the entire link-sharing ecosystem that Twitter has built.

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